Johann Hari: The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling

Taken from The Independent, Monday, 29 December 2008

The world isn't just watching the Israeli government commit a crime in Gaza; we are watching it self-harm. This morning, and tomorrow morning, and every morning until this punishment beating ends, the young people of the Gaza Strip are going to be more filled with hate, and more determined to fight back, with stones or suicide vests or rockets. Israeli leaders have convinced themselves that the harder you beat the Palestinians, the softer they will become. But when this is over, the rage against Israelis will have hardened, and the same old compromises will still be waiting by the roadside of history, untended and unmade.

To understand how frightening it is to be a Gazan this morning, you need to have stood in that small slab of concrete by the Mediterranean and smelled the claustrophobia. The Gaza Strip is smaller than the Isle of Wight but it is crammed with 1.5 million people who can never leave.

They live out their lives on top of each other, jobless and hungry, in vast, sagging tower blocks. From the top floor, you can often see the borders of their world: the Mediterranean, and Israeli barbed wire. When bombs begin to fall – as they are doing now with more deadly force than at any time since 1967 – there is nowhere to hide.

There will now be a war over the story of this war. The Israeli government says, "We withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and in return we got Hamas and Qassam rockets being rained on our cities. Sixteen civilians have been murdered. How many more are we supposed to sacrifice?" It is a plausible narrative, and there are shards of truth in it, but it is also filled with holes. If we want to understand the reality and really stop the rockets, we need to rewind a few years and view the run-up to this war dispassionately.

The Israeli government did indeed withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005 – in order to be able to intensify control of the West Bank. Ariel Sharon's senior adviser, Dov Weisglass, was unequivocal about this, explaining: "The disengagement [from Gaza] is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians... this whole package that is called the Palestinian state has been removed from our agenda indefinitely."

Ordinary Palestinians were horrified by this, and by the fetid corruption of their own Fatah leaders, so they voted for Hamas. It certainly wouldn't have been my choice – an Islamist party is antithetical to all my convictions - but we have to be honest. It was a free and democratic election, and it was not a rejection of a two-state solution. The most detailed polling of Palestinians, by the University of Maryland, found that 72 per cent want a two-state solution on the 1967 borders, while fewer than 20 per cent want to reclaim the whole of historic Palestine.

So, partly in response to this pressure, Hamas offered Israel a long, long ceasefire and a de facto acceptance of two states, if only Israel would return to its legal borders.

Rather than seize this opportunity and test Hamas's sincerity, the Israeli government reacted by punishing the entire civilian population. It announced that it was blockading the Gaza Strip in order to "pressure" its people to reverse the democratic process. The Israelis surrounded the Strip and refused to let anyone or anything out. They let in a small trickle of food, fuel and medicine – but not enough for survival. Weisglass quipped that the Gazans were being "put on a diet". According to Oxfam, only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza last month to feed 1.5 million people. The United Nations says poverty has reached an "unprecedented level." When I was last in besieged Gaza, I saw hospitals turning away the sick because their machinery and medicine was running out. I met hungry children stumbling around the streets, scavenging for food.

It was in this context – under a collective punishment designed to topple a democracy – that some forces within Gaza did something immoral: they fired Qassam rockets indiscriminately at Israeli cities. These rockets have killed 16 Israeli citizens. This is abhorrent: targeting civilians is always murder. But it is hypocritical for the Israeli government to claim now to speak out for the safety of civilians when it has been terrorising civilians as a matter of state policy.

The American and European governments are responding with a lop-sidedness that ignores these realities. They say that Israel cannot be expected to negotiate while under rocket fire, but they demand that the Palestinians do so under siege in Gaza and violent military occupation in the West Bank.

Before it falls down the memory hole, we should remember that last week, Hamas offered a ceasefire in return for basic and achievable compromises. Don't take my word for it. According to the Israeli press, Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security service Shin Bet, "told the Israeli cabinet [on 23 December] that Hamas is interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms." Diskin explained that Hamas was requesting two things: an end to the blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West Bank. The cabinet – high with election fever and eager to appear tough – rejected these terms.

The core of the situation has been starkly laid out by Ephraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad. He says that while Hamas militants – like much of the Israeli right-wing – dream of driving their opponents away, "they have recognised this ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future." Instead, "they are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967." They are aware that this means they "will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original goals" – and towards a long-term peace based on compromise.

The rejectionists on both sides – from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Bibi Netanyahu of Israel – would then be marginalised. It is the only path that could yet end in peace but it is the Israeli government that refuses to choose it. Halevy explains: "Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas."

Why would Israel act this way? The Israeli government wants peace, but only one imposed on its own terms, based on the acceptance of defeat by the Palestinians. It means the Israelis can keep the slabs of the West Bank on "their" side of the wall. It means they keep the largest settlements and control the water supply. And it means a divided Palestine, with responsibility for Gaza hived off to Egypt, and the broken-up West Bank standing alone. Negotiations threaten this vision: they would require Israel to give up more than it wants to. But an imposed peace will be no peace at all: it will not stop the rockets or the rage. For real safety, Israel will have to talk to the people it is blockading and bombing today, and compromise with them.

The sound of Gaza burning should be drowned out by the words of the Israeli writer Larry Derfner. He says: "Israel's war with Gaza has to be the most one-sided on earth... If the point is to end it, or at least begin to end it, the ball is not in Hamas's court – it is in ours."

Rice tops US 'official gift list'

Taken from BBC News, Wednesday, 24 December 2008

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has topped the list of US officials for the number of gifts received in 2007, a state department report shows.







Ms Rice received $312,000 (£211,000) worth of jewels from the king of Saudi Arabia - worth three times more than his gifts to President George W Bush.

Among the presents listed for First Lady Laura Bush were "nuts and dried fruit" from the Dalai Lama - worth $6.

However, all gifts remain public property in keeping with US law.

In January 2007, Saudi King Abdullah presented Ms Rice with a diamond and emerald set - including a necklace, bracelet, earrings and a ring - worth $147,000 (£100,000), according to the list.

In July 2007, he gave Ms Rice a set of diamond and ruby jewellery valued at $165,000.

The inventory also includes a $170,000 flower petal necklace he gave Ms Rice in 2005, which the department says was not previously disclosed.

Earlier, the state department reported erroneously that the jewellery valued at $147,000 had been given to Ms Rice by King Abdullah II of Jordan, not the Saudi monarch.

Fitness machines
Mr Bush's wife, Laura, also received a diamond and sapphire set from the Saudi monarch, but hers was worth just half that given to Ms Rice at $85,000.

From the same Arab leaders, President Bush received just over $100,000 in gifts in 2007, the list shows.

Among the more offbeat gifts, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrick Reinfeldt honoured the US leader with a $570 made-in-Sweden power saw equipped "with comfort grip handles", presumably for use at his Texas ranch.

And the prime minister of Singapore gave Mr Bush $450 worth of fitness equipment, including a uSurf Wave Action Exerciser and an iGallop Core and Abs Exerciser.

The wife of Japan's former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave Mrs Bush two hand-embroidered pillows with the names and images of first dogs Barney and Miss Beazley worth $100.

Unfortunately for the recipients, the gifts must be turned over to the General Services Administration in accordance with US law, which bars politicians and officials from accepting personal presents in almost all circumstances.

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If these were the official gift from states - I wonder what the unofficial gifts might be - i.e hidden in Swss bank accounts etc. It's no surprise that the Saudi & other Arab Monarchs waste money offering jewels when they know fully well that it will eventually go to the state rather than to the individual. It must be even hurtful for Muslims around the world to see money wasted when it could have been used to feed the poor etc.

Ahmadinejad gives Christmas Speech

Channel 4 of the U.K. broadcasted an alternative to the Queens Speech - this one by Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran giving a short message of hope and prosperity for Christmas.



Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, delivered Channel 4's alternative Christmas address yesterday, sending a message of "happiness, prosperity, peace and brotherhood for humanity" which immediately ignited a furious row.

The speech by Mr Ahmadinejad, whose nuclear ambitions and views on Israel and homosexuality have strained relations between Iran and the West, was moderate, with none of the harsh rhetoric for which he has gained notoriety. God, he said, had created "every human being with the ability to reach the heights of perfection". He also urged Muslims and Christians to work together towards a world of "love, brotherhood and justice".

Speaking in Farsi with English subtitles, Mr Ahmadinejad sent his congratulations to "the followers of Abrahamic faiths, especially the followers of Jesus Christ, and the people of Britain".

He said the world's ills had come about through nations failing to follow the teachings of the Prophets, including Jesus. He also made a thinly-veiled attack on the US, claiming Christ would have been against "bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers" and would have opposed "warmongers, occupiers, terrorists and bullies the world over".

Israel called the message a "sick and twisted irony". Ron Prosor, the Israeli ambassador to Britain, said: "In Iran, converts to Christianity face the death penalty."

The full text of a Christmas message - Click Here!
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The fact of the matter is that this was the best Christmas Message i have ever heard - It was a religious message - much better than the usual message from the Queen which is probably written by 10 Downing street and is more political. I would be happy to hear more messages like this in future. As for the Israeli ambassador - he seems to stay silent on the plight of Palestinian Christians that have been forced out of Bethlehem, West Bank and those that continue to live there face oppression by the Israeli government. No mention of the wall dividing the Jews against Muslims & Christians, that is causing economic hardship, business to go bust, high unemployment rates between Muslim and Christian Arabs, checkpoints all over Palestine causing further hardships – no mention of the dwindling numbers of Christians in place where many believe Christianity began.

Madoff made off with the mother of all hedge funds scams

Ex-chairman of Nasdaq is charged over £33bn 'Ponzi' scam

Taken from Daily Mail, UK, 12th December 2008
By Bill Condie

Former Nasdaq chairman Bernard Madoff has been charged with running a $50billion (£33.7billion) fraudulent investment scam.

Madoff, a long-time powerful Wall Street figure, told staff at his investment firm that a hedge fund he ran was 'all just one big lie' and that it was 'basically, a giant Ponzi scheme' with estimated investor losses of about $50billion, according to a criminal complaint against him.

A Ponzi scheme is a pyramid-type scam in which very high returns are promised to early investors, who are paid off with money put up by later ones.





The $50billion allegedly lost by investors would make Madoff's fund one of the biggest frauds in history.

When Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001, one of the largest at the time, it had $63.4billion in assets.

Prosecutors charged Madoff, 70, with a single count of securities fraud, for which he faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $5million if convicted.

Lev Dassin, acting Attorney General for the Southern District of New York, said: "Madoff stated that the business was insolvent, and that it had been for years."

His lawyer, Dan Horwitz, said outside the manhattan court where Madoff was charged: "He is a longstanding leader in the financial services industry. We will fight to get through this unfortunate set of events."

Madoff stared at the ground as reporters asked questions. He was released after posting a $10million bond secured by his Manhattan flat.

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Well you couldn't make this up. So much for the American regulators of financial markets.


Below is list of the banks and financial institutions affected so far (taken from Telegraph, UK, 19.12.08), all information had been sourced from company statements and agency reports:

Access International Advisors said some of its funds were invested with Bernard Madoff. The New York-based investment firm said it was working with counsel to assess the situation, describing it as "a shocking development".

Insurer Axa said that it faced losses because of the Madoff scandal, but said that its exposure amounted to less than €100m (£90m).

Spain's Banco Santander, which owns Abbey and Alliance and Leicester, said its hedge fund unit invested €2.33bn (£2bn) of client funds with Bernard Madoff.

The Geneva-based Banque Benedict Hentsch Fairfield Partners SA said its exposure is 56m Swiss francs (£32m) of client assets.

Spain's second-largest bank, BBVA, said it could potentially lose €300m (£270m) in the alleged scam run by New York trader Bernard Madoff.

Boston philanthropist Carl Shapiro’s charitable foundation - $145m (source Boston Globe).

Bramdean Alternatives Ltd - 9.5pc of its assets, according to a company statement.

BNP Paribas, France's biggest listed bank, said it could face a potential €350m (£313) loss from an exposure to Bernard Madoff's investment activities.

EIM Group - $230m (£153m) (source Reuters, citing Le Temps Newspaper).

EFG International, the Swiss private bank whose largest shareholder is the Latsis family, said some of its clients have investments worth $130 million in funds managed by Bernard Madoff’s investment-advisory business.

Elise Wiesal Foundation for Humanity - undetermined ( source Wall Street Journal).

Fairfield Greenwich Group - $7.5bn, according to a company statement.

Fix Asset Management - $400m (£266m), according to a company statement.

GMAC chairman Jacob Ezra Merkin's Ascot Partners - Most of its $1.8bn (£1.2bn) of assets (Wall Street Journal).

Harel Insurance Investments and Financial Services - $14.2m (£9.5m), according to a company statement.

HSBC said it has a potential exposure of about $1bn (£688m) in loans provided to a small number of institutional clients who invested in funds with Madoff.

Julian J. Levitt Foundation - $6m (£4m) (source Washington Post).

Kingate Management Ltd - $3.5bn (£2.3bn) (source Bloomberg).

Korea Life Insurance - $50m (£33m) (source Yonhap news).

Korea Teachers' Pension - $9.1m (£6m), according to a company statement.

Man Group said that its institutional fund of funds business RMF has approximately $360m (£239m) invested in two funds that are directly or indirectly sub-advised by Madoff Securities and for which Madoff Securities acts as broker/dealer executing the investment strategy.

Madoff Family Foundation - $19m (£13m) - (source Washington Post).

Maxam Capital Management - $280m (£186m) - (source Wall Street Journal).

Neue Privat Bank, a Zurich-based bank, said its clients may lose as much as $5m (£3m) invested in the fund linked to Bernard Madoff. The money was invested through Nomura Bank International, Neue Privat Bank said in a release.

New York Met's owner Fred Wilpon's Sterling Equities - undertermined, according to a company statement.

Nomura Holdings, Japan's largest brokerage, said it has 27.5 billion yen ($302 million) at risk linked to Bernard Madoff's investment funds

Norman Braman, former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles Football Team - undertermined (source Wall Street Journal).

North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System - $5m (£3.3m), according to a company statement.

Notz, Stucki & Cie - undertermined (source Reuters, citing Le Temps newspaper)

Pioneer Alternative Investments - almost all of its $280m (£187m) of assets (source Bloomberg).

Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation - $8m (£5.3m) (source Washington Post).

Royal Bank of Scotland said it had exposure through trading and collateralised lending to funds of hedge funds invested with Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities.If as a result of the alleged fraud the value of the assets of these hedge funds is nil, RBS's potential loss could amount to approximately £400m.

The Dutch pension fund of Royal Dutch Shell said it has a $45m exposure to the alleged $50bn fraud by prominent Wall Street trader Bernard Madoff.

Reichmuth and Co’s Reichmuth Matterhorn fund - $330m (£221m) (source letter to clients).

Societe Generale - less than €10m, according to a company statement.

Tremont Capital Management - undertermined (source Wall Street Journal).

Yeshiva University - undetermined (source Washington Post)

Abbas: Israel must free all 11,000 Palestinian prisoners

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 15/12/2008
By Tomer Zarchin

Israel on Monday released 227 Palestinian prisoners as a gesture to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to mark the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice), which marks the end of the hajj pilgrimage.

Of the prisoners, 209 were transferred from Ofer Prison, near Jerusalem, to the Beituniya checkpoint in the West Bank. The remaining 18 prisoners were to be transferred from Shikma Prison in the Negev, to the Erez checkpoint on the Israel-Gaza border. At his office in Ramallah, Abbas greeted each of the 209 prisoners released to the West Bank individually with kisses on the cheeks, but said Israel should release all Palestinians it was holding.

"Our happiness will not be complete until all of the 11,000 prisoners are freed," he said. "We promise you we will work to free all prisoners from all factions."

Hundreds of relatives and supporters waited on the Palestinian side of the Beitunia checkpoint, waving Palestinian and yellow flags of Abbas' secular Fatah movement and carrying posters of late Fatah leader Yasser Arafat. The two Palestinian territories have divided leadership.

Gaza is ruled by the militant Hamas organization, which refuses to recognize Israel; the West Bank territories are largely under the control of Abbas and his Fatah organization, which is engaged in a sporadic peace process with Israel.

"We hope these releases will be seen as an important confidence-building measure designed to strengthen the trust and the confidence in the [peace] negotiations," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The Supreme Court gave a green light Monday morning for the release, hours after Justice Elyakim Rubinstein ordered that the state must first reply to a petition against it. The petitioners had argued that freeing jailed Palestinians placed the region at risk of renewed conflagration.

According to prosecutors, an examination of the prisoners listed for release showed that none had been charged with causing injury to Israelis, Army Radio reported. As a matter of general precedent, the courts rarely intervene with the government's decisions on matters of policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians. The prisoners being freed are a fraction of the 11,000 Palestinians held by Israel. Their release was originally due to take place last week, during Eid.

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So 11,000 prisoners held by illegal occupation. Innocent people help captive in Israeli cells, without trial, some abducted by the Israeli army not hust in Palestine but also from Lebanon - yet no one bats an eye lid on why they have been held captive and if they are so dangerous why have they been released as a gesture of goodwill. There rae not terrorist they are innocent people - the real terrorist are the illegal occupiers running the State of Israel.

WMD found in IRAQ!

Shoey to go W!

If Youtube video doesn't work then click here!

Don't shoe forget about me!

In the middle of the news conference with Mr Maliki, Iraqi television journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi stood up and shouted "this is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog," before hurling a shoe at Mr Bush which narrowly missed him.

Showing the soles of shoes to someone is a sign of contempt in Arab culture.

With his second shoe, which the president also managed to dodge, Mr Zaidi said: "This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq."

Mr Zaidi, a correspondent for Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya TV, was then wrestled to the ground by security personnel and hauled away.

The World would like to thank Muntadar al-Zaidi - you sir have definitely left a rememberable event in the legacy of George W Bush's reign.

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A few updates...

(1) 15/12/08 - according to BBC news - Thousands of Iraqis have demanded the release of a local TV reporter who threw his shoes at US President George W Bush at a Baghdad news conference. Crowds gathered in Baghdad's Sadr City district, calling for "hero" Muntadar al-Zaidi to be freed from custody.

(2) 15/12/08 - according to Daily Mail - The Iraqi journalist was given a bravery award by a Libyan charity. The Waatassimou group gave Muntazer al-Zaidi the courage award because it said 'what he did represents a victory for human rights across the world'.

(3) 16/12/08 - According to the Guardian Newspaper - It was claimed by the brother of Muntadar al-Zaidi that he has been beaten in custody. Dargham, told the BBC today that al-Zaidi had suffered a broken hand, ribs, suffered internal bleeding and sustained an eye injury.
According to the BBC, after the incident, al-Zaidi was detained by Iraqi authorities under the command of national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, who also said the 28-year-old will be prosecuted under Iraqi law.

(4) 17/12/08 - According to Reuters - An Egyptian man said he was offering his 20-year-old daughter in marriage to Iraqi journalist Muntazer. The daughter, Amal Saad Gumaa, said she agreed with the idea. "This is something that would honor me. I would like to live in Iraq, especially if I were attached to this hero," she told Reuters by telephone. Her father, Saad Gumaa, said he had called Dergham, Zaidi's brother, to tell him of the offer. "I find nothing more valuable than my daughter to offer to him, and I am prepared to provide her with everything needed for marriage," he added. Amal is a student in the media faculty at Minya University in central Egypt. Zaidi's response to the proposal was not immediately clear.

(5) 22/12/08 - according to BBC news- Muntadar al-Zaidi is due to face trial on 31 December accused of "aggression against a foreign head of state", which carries a jail sentence of up to 15 years.

(6) 22/12/08 - according to BBC news - Istanbul-based Baydan Shoes claims it made the shoes that the journalist threw at President Bush. They say that they have tens of thousands of orders from around the world - including from the US and Iraq. The shoe was called Model 271 but has been renamed Bush shoe, the firm said. However, the brother of shoe-throwing journalist Muntader al-Zaidi says he believes the shoes were Iraqi-made. Durgham al-Zaidi criticised people he said were trying to exploit his brother's actions for commercial gain. "The Syrians claim the shoes were made in Syria and the Turks say they made them. Some say he bought them in Egypt. But as far as I know, he bought them in Baghdad and they were made in Iraq," he told the AFP news agency.

Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders

Taken from The New York Times, December 13, 2008
By JAMES GLANZ and T. CHRISTIAN MILLER

BAGHDAD — An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

(for original PDF Document - Click here!)

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

WATER Students used water from a faucet at the Khulafa al-Rashideen school in Baghdad in October. Access to potable water plummeted after the 2003 invasion.

In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ”

Mr. Powell’s assertion that the Pentagon inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004.

Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.
The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed.

COMMUNICATION Landline phone service plunged after the invasion, forcing Iraqis to rely on cellphone companies, above.

By mid-2008, the history says, $117 billion had been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, including some $50 billion in United States taxpayer money.

The history contains a catalog of revelations that show the chaotic and often poisonous atmosphere prevailing in the reconstruction effort.

When the Office of Management and Budget balked at the American occupation authority’s abrupt request for about $20 billion in new reconstruction money in August 2003, a veteran Republican lobbyist working for the authority made a bluntly partisan appeal to Joshua B. Bolten, then the O.M.B. director and now the White House chief of staff. “To delay getting our funds would be a political disaster for the President,” wrote the lobbyist, Tom C. Korologos. “His election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without the funding this year, progress will grind to a halt.” With administration backing, Congress allocated the money later that year.

In an illustration of the hasty and haphazard planning, a civilian official at the United States Agency for International Development was at one point given four hours to determine how many miles of Iraqi roads would need to be reopened and repaired. The official searched through the agency’s reference library, and his estimate went directly into a master plan. Whatever the quality of the agency’s plan, it eventually began running what amounted to a parallel reconstruction effort in the provinces that had little relation with the rest of the American effort.

Money for many of the local construction projects still under way is divided up by a spoils system controlled by neighborhood politicians and tribal chiefs. “Our district council chairman has become the Tony Soprano of Rasheed, in terms of controlling resources,” said an American Embassy official working in a dangerous Baghdad neighborhood. “ ‘You will use my contractor or the work will not get done.’ ”

A Cautionary Tale
The United States could soon have reason to consult this cautionary tale of deception, waste and poor planning, as troop levels and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan are likely to be stepped up under the new administration.

The incoming Obama administration’s rebuilding experts are expected to focus on smaller-scale projects and emphasize political and economic reform. Still, such programs do not address one of the history’s main contentions: that the reconstruction effort has failed because no single agency in the United States government has responsibility for the job.

Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the history concludes, “the government as a whole has never developed a legislatively sanctioned doctrine or framework for planning, preparing and executing contingency operations in which diplomacy, development and military action all figure.”

ELECTRICITY A new generator in Baghdad in 2007. Electricity output is now only slightly higher than it was before the war.

Titled “Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience,” the new history was compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a Republican lawyer who regularly travels to Iraq and has a staff of engineers and auditors based here. Copies of several drafts of the history were provided to reporters at The New York Times and ProPublica by two people outside the inspector general’s office who have read the draft, but are not authorized to comment publicly.


OIL The production of oil at Iraqi fields, like the one above, 370 miles southeast of Baghdad, has been below prewar levels.

Mr. Bowen’s deputy, Ginger Cruz, declined to comment for publication on the substance of the history. But she said it would be presented on Feb. 2 at the first hearing of the Commission on Wartime Contracting, which was created this year as a result of legislation sponsored by Senators Jim Webb of Virginia and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, both Democrats.

The manuscript is based on approximately 500 new interviews, as well as more than 600 audits, inspections and investigations on which Mr. Bowen’s office has reported over the years. Laid out for the first time in a connected history, the material forms the basis for broad judgments on the rebuilding program.

In the preface, Mr. Bowen gives a searing critique of what he calls the “blinkered and disjointed prewar planning for Iraq’s reconstruction” and the botched expansion of the program from a modest initiative to improve Iraqi services to a multibillion-dollar enterprise.

Mr. Bowen also swipes at the endless revisions and reversals of the program, which at various times gyrated from a focus on giant construction projects led by large Western contractors to modest community-based initiatives carried out by local Iraqis. While Mr. Bowen concedes that deteriorating security had a hand in spoiling the program’s hopes, he suggests, as he has in the past, that the program did not need much outside help to do itself in.

Despite years of studying the program, Mr. Bowen writes that he still has not found a good answer to the question of why the program was even pursued as soaring violence made it untenable. “Others will have to provide that answer,” Mr. Bowen writes.

“But beyond the security issue stands another compelling and unavoidable answer: the U.S. government was not adequately prepared to carry out the reconstruction mission it took on in mid-2003,” he concludes.

The history cites some projects as successes. The review praises community outreach efforts by the Agency for International Development, the Treasury Department’s plan to stabilize the Iraqi dinar after the invasion and a joint effort by the Departments of State and Defense to create local rebuilding teams.

But the portrait that emerges over all is one of a program’s officials operating by the seat of their pants in the middle of a critical enterprise abroad, where the reconstruction was supposed to convince the Iraqi citizenry of American good will and support the new democracy with lights that turned on and taps that flowed with clean water. Mostly, it is a portrait of a program that seemed to grow exponentially as even those involved from the inception of the effort watched in surprise.

Early Miscalculations
On the eve of the invasion, as it began to dawn on a few officials that the price for rebuilding Iraq would be vastly greater than they had been told, the degree of miscalculation was illustrated in an encounter between Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, and Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant general who had hastily been named the chief of what would be a short-lived civilian authority called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq.

“What do you think that’ll cost?” Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.

“I think it’s going to cost billions of dollars,” Mr. Garner said.

“My friend,” Mr. Rumsfeld replied, “if you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.”

In a way he never anticipated, Mr. Rumsfeld turned out to be correct: before that year was out, the United States had appropriated more than $20 billion for the reconstruction, which would indeed involve projects across the entire country.

Mr. Rumsfeld declined to comment on the history, but a spokesman, Keith Urbahn, said that quotes attributed to Mr. Rumsfeld in the document “appear to be accurate.” Mr. Powell also declined to comment.

The secondary effects of the invasion and its aftermath were among the most important factors that radically changed the outlook. Tables in the history show that measures of things like the national production of electricity and oil, public access to potable water, mobile and landline telephone service and the presence of Iraqi security forces all plummeted by at least 70 percent, and in some cases all the way to zero, in the weeks after the invasion.

Subsequent tables in the history give a fast-forward view of what happened as the avalanche of money tumbled into Iraq over the next five years.

Dashed Expectations
By the time a sovereign Iraqi government took over from the Americans in June 2004, none of those services — with a single exception, mobile phones — had returned to prewar levels.

And by the time of the security improvements in 2007 and 2008, electricity output had, at best, a precarious 10 percent lead on its levels under Saddam Hussein; oil production was still below prewar levels; and access to potable water had increased by about 30 percent, although with Iraq’s ruined piping system it was unclear how much reached people’s homes uncontaminated.

Whether the rebuilding effort could have succeeded in a less violent setting will never be known. In April 2004, thousands of the Iraqi security forces that had been oversold by the Pentagon were overrun, abruptly mutinied or simply abandoned their posts as the insurgency broke out, sending Iraq down a violent path from which it has never completely recovered.

At the end of his narrative, Mr. Bowen chooses a line from “Great Expectations” by Dickens as the epitaph of the American-led attempt to rebuild Iraq: “We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us.”

Blackwater court battle looms

Taken from Al-Jazeere News Agency, 08 Dec 2008

Five security guards accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad are expected to hand themselves over to federal authorities in the United States.

Exact details of the charges against the employees of the Blackwater private security firm are expected to be made public on Monday after they have surrendered.

Click here for Video!

However, it is known that the five military veterans were indicted for manslaughter offences in Washington DC on Thursday.

On Sunday they were given 24 hours to surrender themselves to the FBI.

The Associated Press news agency reported that the men would hand themselves over in the US state of Utah on Monday, possibly sparking a legal battle over where the trial should be heard.

Any dispute over where the trial should be held would delay proceedings and further frustrate the relatives of the Iraqis killed in Baghdad's al-Nisoor Square in September 2007.

'Fair judgment'

Mohammed Al-Kinani, whose son was killed in the shooting, said: "We hope to see a fair judgment that will impose the maxium penalty for them, not only the guards but the director who gave them the authority, weapons, vehicles and immunity."

But Dr Haythem Al-Rubaie, who lost his wife and son in the al-Nisoor Square shootings, said there was "no credibility" in the US judiciary.

"But let me be optimistic and I hope that the judge will be a fair one since there are many innocent people who were killed in the attack and there should be a fair judge who will not respond to pressures.

"We hope that his word is a fair word, the result will show us credibility," he said.

The five men's identities and the nature of the charges against them had been kept secret for more than a year, but were also released on Sunday.

They were named as Evan Liberty and Donald Ball, both 26-year-old former marines, Dustin Heard, a 27-year-old ex-marine, Nick Slatten, 25, an ex-army sergeant, and Paul Slough, a 29-year-old army veteran.

The men are all decorated war veterans who were contracted to protect US diplomats in Iraq.

A sixth guard, who has not been named, has reached a plea bargain deal with prosecutors to avoid a mandatory 30-year prison sentence.

'Unjustified deaths'

Blackwater said that the guards were returning fire after their convoy was shot at in Baghdad's al-Nisoor Square.

The head of Blackwater appeared before the US Congress shortly after the incident, saying that the men acted responsibly.

However, FBI investigators found in late 2007 that most of the 17 deaths had been unjustified.

Steven McCool, a lawyer for Ball, confirmed that his client would surrender in his home state of Utah.

"Donald Ball committed no crime,'' McCool said. "We are confident that any jury will see this for what it is: a politically motivated prosecution to appease the Iraqi government."

The incident created a furore about the perceived ability of private guards to act with impunity in Iraq.

An Iraqi government spokesman has said that they believed that the attack were tantamount to deliberate murder.

Ali Al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, told Al Jazeera that Baghdad would maintain the victims' right to a fair trial and would not accept anything less than "normal standards available in such cases".

The case has also been complicated because, at the time of the attack, private contractors like Blackwater operated without any clear legal oversight and it could be argued they did not have to answer either to Iraqi or US laws.

Under the deal Blackwater had with the US government, it was allowed to repair the vehicles involved in the attack before investigators saw them, taking away key forensic evidence.

UN accuses Israel of punishing aid workers

Taken from The Independent, UK, 1 December 2008
By Anne Penketh

The UN official responsible for the welfare of 4.6 million Palestinian refugees has accused Israel of extending its punishment of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip to include international humanitarian staff.

Karen AbuZayd, who is based in Gaza City, said that Israeli authorities have within the past month stopped UN staff based in Gaza from using the diplomatic pouch. They gave no reason for the move, which is a clear breach of international law.

“We can’t send the mail out or get any mail in. I don’t think they could give a reason because there is no way they could justify it,” said Mrs AbuZayd, an American who is commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA is the main provider of basic services – such as education and health – to registered Palestine refugees, including 1.1 million in Gaza.

Two weeks ago the Israelis issued for the first time a written list of goods that cannot be sent into Gaza for UN humanitarian needs, she said. The list, which has baffled UN officials, includes spices, kitchenware, glassware, yarn and paper.

“They are punishing the international community that’s inside,” said Mrs AbuZayd. “For our own office, we are having trouble in keeping it going, because we’re not allowed to bring in spare parts,” she added. UN cars are lying idle for lack of tyres and oil, office photocopiers cannot be mended and computers are not allowed into Gaza. “And we’re supposed to have privileges and immunities,” she added.

As the restrictions have been extended, the international press has been barred from entering Gaza for the past month, and is challenging the Israeli decision in the Supreme Court.

The UNRWA chief officer is to meet the new Israeli co-ordinator, General Amos Gilad, next week to discuss the latest developments. It will be their first meeting since his appointment in September. Until now, the United Nations has privately protested against the decisions but Mrs AbuZayd’s decision to speak out publicly about the crisis is a sign of the level of frustration within the UN.

The Israeli blockade has caused an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza since it was imposed after the election of Hamas in January 2006. But Israel has refused to ease the measures on the ground that Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets on Israel from the territory.

The spokesman for London’s Israeli embassy, Lior Ben-Dor, today said that the restrictions were due to safety concerns. “We can’t operate the checkpoints because we are not willing to risk the lives of Israelis,” he said.best wishes,

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If Israel left the occupied Palestine then there would not be any security issues to ponder about. Palestinians have been suffering for decades, generation after generation by the aggressive Israeli state (who pretends to be the aggrieved). On the same day this story was written, Israel blocked a Libyan ship carrying 3,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid for Palestinians from docking in Gaza. The voyage of the Marwa, which carried food, blankets and powdered milk, was intended to challenge Israel's economic blockade on the Gaza Strip, which has tightened in recent weeks. But as the ship approached Gazan waters at dawn an Israeli naval ship ordered it to turn back.

Bush: My biggest regret is false intelligence on Iraq WMDs

Taken from Haaretz, Israel
By Reuters, 01/12/2008

U.S. President George W. Bush said the biggest regret of his presidency was flawed intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Bush told ABC "World News" in an interview scheduled to air on Monday that he was unprepared for war when he took office.

Bush leaves the White House on Jan. 20 with public approval ratings near record lows partly due to the unpopular Iraq war that toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. More than 4,200 U.S. troops have died in Iraq.

"It was a tough call, particularly, since a lot of people were advising for me to get out of Iraq, or pull back in Iraq," he said.

There are 146,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 32,000 in Afghanistan.

In his final months at the White House, Bush said he was required to take bold action on the financial crisis to ward off another Great Depression.

He was asked whether it scared him that government actions to address the financial crisis amounted to about $9.5 trillion, equivalent to about half the U.S. economy.

"What scared me is not doing anything, which would have caused there to be a huge financial meltdown and the conceivable scenario that we'd have been in a depression greater than the Great Depression," Bush said.

He told ABC: "I will leave the presidency with my head held high."

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On the centenary, he will leave office o be known as one of the worst and most hated Presidents of the United States. This war monger has blood on his hands – people will be glad that he is going very soon.

Obama evokes brighter days ahead in Thanksgiving address

Taken from Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
November 28, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday promised "a new beginning" when he takes over the White House in January and urged Americans to work together to overcome a deepening economic crisis.


President-elect Barack Obama, second from right, his wife Michelle Obama, left, and daughters Sasha, 7, second from the left, and Malia, 10, second from the right, greet people at a food bank in Chicago.

"This weekend - with one heart, and one voice, the American people can give thanks that a new and brighter day is yet to come," Obama said in the weekly Democratic radio address, usually delivered Saturday but released early for the Thanksgiving holiday.

His political hero, president Abraham Lincoln, established the holiday "in one of the darkest years of our nation's history," 1863, during the US Civil War, Obama said.

"This Thanksgiving also takes place at a time of great trial for our people," Obama said.
"We face an economic crisis of historic proportions."

"That's why I am committed to forging a new beginning from the moment I take office as president of the United States," the president-elect said.

Earlier this week Obama unveiled his economic team, including Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary and Larry Summers as chairman of the White House National Economic Council, and touted his plan to create 2.5 million jobs through a vast infrastructure spending program.

"But this Thanksgiving we are reminded that the renewal of our economy won't come from policies and plans alone - it will take the hard work, innovation, service and strength of the American people," Obama said.

"Times are tough. There are difficult months ahead. But we can renew our nation the same way that we have in the many years since Lincoln's first Thanksgiving: by coming together to overcome adversity; by reaching for - and working for - new horizons of opportunity for all Americans."

American families gather on the fourth Thursday in November for a festive dinner of turkey, potatoes and pie, seen as commemorating the first harvest feast of English pilgrims in the new world in 1621.

Mumbai gunman goes on TV to justify terror attacks

Taken from Sydney morning Herald, Australia
November 27, 2008

One of the gunmen involved in terrorist blasts in Mumbai told a television channel he belonged to an Indian Islamist group seeking an end to the persecution of Indian Muslims.

Identifying himself as a member of a group calling itself Deccan Mujahedeen, the gunman, who was holed up in the Oberoi Trident Hotel, called for the release of all fellow Islamic militants detained in India.



"Muslims in India should not be persecuted. We love this as our country but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?" he told the India TV channel by phone from inside the hotel, which is surrounded by army commandos.

Up to 100 people were killed and about 100 more wounded in the attacks, Indian media reported.

The luxury Taj Mahal and Oberoi Trident hotels and eight other locations across Mumbai, including the train station, a hospital and an up-market restaurant were hit in precisely-timed assaults by small groups of gunmen who lobbed grenades into crowds and opened fire with AK-47s on people as they fled.

Maharashtra Director General of Police A N Roy was quoted by the Press Trust of India as saying that about 100 people were dead.

The NDTV news channel put the death toll at 100, with 110 injured in the ongoing violence. The IBN Live channel said at least 87 people were dead. The Times of India was reporting up to 900 injured.

Two Australians - Katie Anstee, 24, and her boyfriend David Coker, 23 - were among the injured as they dineed at Cafe Leopold, and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told parliament today the number of Australian casualties could rise.

Australia's Islamic leaders have condemned the attacks.

President of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils Ikebal Adam Patel said he learned of the atrocity with shock and dismay and condemned the Mumbai attacks as abhorrent, despicable and outrageous.

He said attacks against innocent people were abhorrent to all peaceful people and to all faiths. He stressed that Islam does not preach acts of terrorism and rightly condemns those who do, even if they are Muslims.

Witnesses said the gunmen had specifically chosen US and British citizens to take hostage, and some foreign tourists are reported to be among the dead, including one Japanese man. A Briton who was dining at the Oberoi hotel also said the gunmen there singled out Britons and Americans.

"They were talking about British and Americans specifically,'' Alex Chamberlain told Sky News. One of 12 members of a 20-strong NSW trade delegation is unaccounted for and other members of the delegation are trapped in hotel rooms with gunmen taking hostages outside.

Officials were checking with local authorities and hotel owners to determine exactly how many Australians had been caught up in the incidents, he said.

One terrified Australian is former Neighbours actress Brooke Satchwell, who is trapped with her boyfriend.

Rabbi taken hostage
A Jewish rabbi and his family have been taken hostage, India's Jewish Federation said. "The name of the place is Chabad house in South Mumbai. I hear commandos are storming the apartment block, which is a four-storey building. A rabbi is in there with his family," Indian Jewish Federation chairman Jonathan Solomon said.

"I don't know the number of gunmen in there. I don't know how many family members are in there," he added.

Meanwhile, as mainstream media outlets struggled to contend with the enormity of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, citizen journalists were already on the scene filing a constant stream of reports and images from the ground.

Every moment of the attacks has been documented in harrowing detail on Twitter, with new messages published from mobile phones every second as people described the scenes around them.

A little-known Islamic group, the Islamic Security Force-Indian Mujahedeen, claimed responsibility for serial blasts last month in India's northeast state of Assam that claimed nearly 80 lives.

Six weeks earlier, the capital New Delhi had been hit by a series of bombs in crowded markets that left more than 20 dead. Those blasts were claimed by a group calling itself the Indian Mujahedeen.

US charity guilty in Hamas case

Taken from Al-Jazeera News Agency, November 25, 2008

A US court has convicted a Muslim charity and five of its former leaders on 108 charges in the largest "terrorism" financing trial in US history.

The Texas jury reached its verdict on Monday after eight days of deliberations over whether the former Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, once the largest US Muslim charity, had given money to the Palestinian group Hamas.

The charity, which was shut down seven years ago, was accused of giving more than $12m to support Hamas, which was designated a "terrorist organisation" in 1995 by the US government.

The hour-long verdict, following a seven-week trial, came after a first trial ended in October 2007 with one man acquitted on 31 charges but jurors unable to agree on verdicts for others.

Several relatives of those convicted on Monday wept as the verdict was read out in the Dallas courtroom, with one woman shouting "my father is not a criminal".

Ghassan Elashi, Holy Land's former chairman, and Shukri Abu-Baker, thecharity's ex-chief executive, were convicted of a combined 69 charges, includingsupporting a specially-designated "terrorist" organisation, money-laundering and tax fraud, The Associated Press reported.

Mufid Abdulqader and Abdulrahman Odeh were convicted on three counts ofconspiracy, and Mohammed El-Mezain was convicted on one count of conspiracyto support a "terrorist organisation".

The Holy Land foundation itself was convicted on all 32 counts.

'Political' case
While prosecutors said the foundation raised money for Hamas they did not accuse the charity of directly financing or being involved in "terrorist" activity.

Prosecutors said the charity was spreading Hamas's ideology by funding schools, hospitals and social welfare programmes controlled by the group in the Palestinian territories, and permitting it to divert funds to the activities of fighters.

However, the charity's supporters said the government was politicising the case as part of its so-called war on terror and ignoring the foundation's charitable mission in providing aid to the poverty-stricken Palestinian territories.

Government officials had raided Holy Land's headquarters in December 2001, and George Bush, the US president, later announced the seizure of the charity's assets as "another step in the war on terrorism".

But defence lawyers said their clients had been put on trial partly because of their family ties to members of Hamas - Khaled Meshaal, Hamas's political leader exiled in Syria, is the brother of defendant Mufid Abdulqader.

Unidentified Israeli witness
Al Jazeera's Tom Ackerman, reporting from Dallas, Texas, where the court case took place, said a former US state department official testified that he was never told that Hamas directed the US charity during intelligence briefings.

But an unidentified Israeli witness told the court that the aid was funnelled through Hamas channels.

Lydia Gonzalez of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said the defendants did not get a fair trial.

"When you're supposed to be able to face your accusers fully and against secret evidence and secret witness, I think that leads to reasonable doubt."

Muslim groups say the prosecution has made American Muslims more hesitant to fulfil their religious obligation of helping the needy and the foundation's defenders accuse the government of selectively prosecuting the charity.

"The same charities that these guys gave to the American Red Cross is still giving to, the USAID is still giving to," Mustafaa Carroll of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said.

Ex-IDF Chief Ya'alon: "We must consider killing Ahmadinejad"

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 23/11/2008

Former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Moshe "Boogie" Ya'alon was quoted as saying by an Australian newspaper this week that the West must consider all options necessary to stop Tehran's nuclear program, including assassinating Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.



"We have to confront the Iranian revolution immediately," Ya'alon said in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, published Monday morning in Australia. "There is no way to stabilize the Middle East today without defeating the Iranian regime. The Iranian nuclear program must be stopped."

When asked whether "all options" included a military deposition of Ahmadinejad and the rest of Iran's current leadership, Ya'alon told The Herald: "We have to consider killing him. All options must be considered." The Jerusalem Post, meanwhile, quoted an aide to Ya'alon as saying the former chief of staff never suggested assassination, just defeating the Iranian regime.

Ya'alon, who served as IDF chief from 2002 through the final year of the Palestinian Intifada in 2005, also told The Herald that a military strike on Iran would be welcomed by regional elements as quelling the most divisive conflict in the Middle East today.

"Any military strike in Iran will be quietly applauded by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf states," he was quoted by The Herald as saying.

"It is a misconception to think that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the most important in the Middle-East. The Shiite-Sunni schism is much bigger, the Persian-Arab divide is bigger, the struggle between national regimes and jihadism is much bigger," he was quoted as saying. "And I can't imagine the U.S. will want to share power in the Middle East with a nuclear-armed Iran."

The former army chief told the paper he has long seen Iran as the source of regional terrorism and was surprised the United States chosen to invade Iraq in its stead.

"I was chief of staff during Operation Iraqi Freedom and I was surprised the U.S. decided to go into Iraq instead of Iran," The Herald quoted him as saying. "Unfortunately, the American public didn't have the political stomach to go into Iran."

Ya'alon made headlines last week when he announced that he would be running for the Knesset on hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud list, after weeks of being courted by the opposition leader.

Interesting reading:
(1) Israeli hawks ready to fly on Iran - Brisbane Times - Click here!
(2) NZ Government overrules war-crimes arrest order against Moshe Ya'alon - New Zealand Herald Click Here!

India shocked by discovery of first Hindu terror cell

At least 10 people, including monk and army officer, held over bombings initially blamed on Islamists

Taken from The Independent, UK,
By Andrew Buncombe in DelhiSunday, 23 November 2008

India is in something of a state of shock after learning from official sources that its first Hindu terror cell may have carried out a series of deadly bombings that were initially blamed on militant Muslims. The revelation is forcing the country to consider some difficult questions.

At least 10 people have been arrested in connection with several bomb blasts in the Muslim-dominated town of Malegaon in the western state of Maharashtra in September, which left six people dead. But reports suggest that police believe the cell may also have carried out a number of previous attacks, including last year's notorious bombing of a cross-border train en route to Pakistan, which killed 68 people. Among the alleged members of the cell are a serving army officer and a Hindu monk.

Bomb attacks are not uncommon in India – there has been a flurry in recent months – but police usually blame them on Muslim extremists, often said to have links to militant groups based in either Pakistan or Bangladesh. As a result, the recent cracking of the alleged Hindu cell has forced India to face some difficult issues. A country that prides itself on purported religious and cultural toleration – an ambition that in reality often falls short – has been made to ask itself how this cell could operate for so long. India's military, which prides itself on its professionalism, has been forced to order an embarrassing inquiry.

The near-daily drip of revelations from police has also caused red faces for India's main political opposition, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), ahead of state polls and a general election scheduled for early next year. The BJP and its prime ministerial candidate, Lal Krishna Advani, have long accused the Congress Party-led government of being soft on terrorism that involved Muslims. However, the BJP has refused to call for a clampdown on Hindu groups, and last week Mr Advani even criticised the police over the way they questioned one of the alleged cell members, a woman called Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur.

The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, phoned his rival to ask him not to politicise the issue or the investigation. "There is a strong case so let the police do their job," he told Mr Advani. While some commentators have expressed surprise about the discovery of the alleged cell, others have pointed out that there has been growing concern about the possible threat from Hindu extremists. In the summer, two members of a right-wing Hindu group were killed while putting together a bomb, and two other suspected members of the same group died in similar circumstances in 2006.

Meanwhile, senior right-wing leaders have made no secret of their wish that Hindus should form suicide squads to protect themselves against Muslim extremists. Bal Thackeray, leader of a group called the Shiv Sena, which has been responsible for communal and regional violence in Mumbai, wrote recently in the party's magazine: "The threat of Islamic terror in India is rising.

It is time to counter the same with Hindu terror. Hindu suicide squads should be readied to ensure the existence of Hindu society and to protect the nation."

Observers say the fact that the police have arrested the alleged cell members amid considerable political pressure suggests the growing professionalism of its security forces. "It's the first Hindu cell and it's the first time Hindus have been shackled and taken to jail," said Professor Dipankar Gupta, a sociologist at Delhi's Jawarlahal Nehru University. "I'm quite pleased with the way the police have done their jobs."

U.S. study urges Obama to press Israel over nuclear program

Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 18/11/2008
By Yossi Melman

The Middle East is in danger of accumulating large stocks of nuclear material over the next decade that could be used to produce over 1,700 nuclear bombs, a U.S. research center has projected in a newly released report.

The Institute for Science and International Security, headed by David Albright, one the world's top experts on nuclear weapons and the prevention of nuclear proliferation, recently released its report urging president-elect Barack Obama to take a number of measures to avoid such an outcome, including convincing Israel to halt production of its nuclear weapons.

"The Obama administration should make a key priority of persuading Israel to join the negotiations for a universal, verified treaty that bans the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear explosives, commonly called the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT)," the institute argued. "As an interim step, the United States should press Israel to suspend any production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. Toward this goal, the United States should change its relatively new policy of seeking a cutoff treaty that does not include verification. The Bush administration's rejection of the long-standing U.S. policy of requiring verification was a mistake that the incoming administration needs to rectify."

Though Israel has never publicly admitted it has nuclear arms, it is largely believed to possess about 200 nuclear warheads. Iran has defied the international community for years by running a nuclear program which many observers fear may allow it to obtain nuclear arms in the future.

More recently, several Middle Eastern countries including the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey announced their intention of building nuclear power plants.

Though most countries said they want to build reactors in order to reduce their dependency on fossil fuels as their sole source of energy, the institute's researchers believe they also wish to create a nuclear infrastructure in their own countries in light of the possibility that Iran will obtain nuclear arms.

In the year 2020 a number of nuclear reactors in the Middle East are expected to be completed, producing over 13 tons of plutonium. According to the institute, a nuclear device requires only eight kilograms to be assembled.

The institute believes the White House should strive to have Egypt, Iran and Israel ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). It also has stated that the U.S. should discourage the reprocessing of irradiated power reactor fuel both domestically and internationally.

Jewish settlers desecrate Hebron mosque and graves

Well we usually hear about Jewish graves through Europe being desecrated by facsist now it seems that Jewish Settlers (majority who had left the same parts of Europe) are doing what facsists had done to their communities!

Taken from Google News, By AFP

HEBRON, West Bank — Jewish settlers angry at an Israeli court order for their eviction from a house in Hebron desecrated a mosque and tombs in the flashpoint West Bank City before dawn on Thursday, witnesses said.

The settlers scrawled "Mohammed is a pig" and "Death to the Arabs" on the front of a mosque and drew the Israeli emblem, the Star of David, on several gravestones in a Muslim cemetery, the witnesses said.

The mosque and cemetery both lie near the Hebron house where dozens of hardline Jewish settlers are defying the order by the Israeli High Court setting last Wednesday a deadline for them to leave or face eviction.

Israeli soldiers are on round-the-clock patrol in the tense neighbourhood.

The ruling, which was slammed by settler leaders, follows a series of violent clashes between Israeli security forces and hardline Jews seeking to erect unauthorised outposts in the West Bank, which Israel occupied in 1967.

The court rejected an appeal by two right-wing organisations against a government order to evacuate the Hebron house, which the settlers claim they had purchased from a Palestinian, who denies selling the house.

The four-storey house at the centre of the dispute was occupied in March 2007 by dozens of hardline Jewish settlers who have dubbed it "the house of peace".

The court ruling said the settlers "should turn to the appropriate legal bodies to prove their ownership over the house and refrain from taking the law into their own hands by occupying the property against the will of its owner."

The settler representatives claimed the house had been bought for 700,000 dollars, but Palestinian Faez Rajabi said he had documents proving he was the legal owner and that the deal had never been completed.

While the court ruling said there were "contradictions and queries" in Rajabi's claims, it also said that documents presented by the settlers in a bid to show ownership "were found by police investigators to be forged."

Leaked list reveals BNP strongholds

Taken from the Independent, 19 November 2008

Lancashire was today revealed as a stronghold of BNP supporters with 861 people in the county on a leaked membership list.

West Yorkshire has the second highest rate of membership with 858 people from the county on the list.

And throughout Yorkshire as a whole the party counts more than 1,600 members.

The list, posted on an internet blog, contains 12,000 names including addresses, contact details and some members' jobs.

Some of the towns in Lancashire with the most BNP members include Oldham (78) and Burnley (73) which were the scene of violent race riots in 2001.

In Yorkshire, more than 240 members live in Leeds and 109 are in Bradford - where the 2001 rioting spread after igniting in Lancashire.

Essex has just over 670 members and the West Midlands more than 580. In Kent 417 people are signed up and in Leicestershire there are 409.

But there are hotspots of BNP membership across the country.

In Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, where there are nine BNP councillors on the city council, there are more than 100 members.

London has close to 500 members on the list and more than 230 members are listed as living in Manchester.

Burnley Council Labour Leader Julie Cooper said: "It doesn't surprise me that there are so many members in Lancashire and in Burnley. The BNP in Burnley have worked very hard to prey on vulnerable communities and appeal to the selfish side in all of us.

"Most of their support comes from traditional Labour areas where there is a lot of deprivation.

"But I think the tide is turning. We have four BNP members on the council now but we used to have seven and I believe that we can bring that down to three at the next election.

"It is such a shame because Burnley has got so much going for it and so many people here are doing a lot of good work."

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The publication of the list was inappropriate and put the lives of people “we disagree with” in danger. Although the original source of the list on Blogger has been taken down there are many websites still hosting the bnpmemberslist.

Whatever people say – groups like The BNP, National front, Combat 18 etc are all racist groups. The BNP may appear to be more mainstream and have a clean cut image but deep down it is another matter.

It has been alleged that hate groups like the above have set up websites that publish names and address of left wing politicians and ordinary people that stand up against fascism. Websites such as redwatch.org / redwatch.net (note: domain name keeps changing) is one prime example. here is a video report youtube.com

The majority of the members of hate groups have grown up in areas where there is a lot of deprivation but most of them have a disillusioned life. One of the highest profile BNP members was uncovered in 2006 – ballerina Simone Clarke. She joined the party to stand up against mass immigration (something unfamiliar to her that every party stands against).

The astonishing thing about Simone Clarke was that at that time she was in a relationship with fellow English National Ballet star Yat-Sen Chang, a Cuban immigrant of Chinese descent. They even have a five year old daughter, Olivia. The relationship didn’t last as Yat-Sen Chang, refused to back her politics. Simone Clarke is currently engaged to local BNP politician Richard Barnbrook who allegedly made the comment of Simone and Yat’s relationship "I'm not opposed to mixed marriages but their children are washing out the identity of this country's indigenous people." - Need I Say more!

Here are some points why many people consider the BNP to be a fascist party Click Here!

Stand up against fascism - for more info Click Here!

World recalls end of World War I

World recalls end of World War I
Taken from BBC News, Tuesday, 11 November 2008

Ceremonies are being held across the globe to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I.

Four years of trench warfare between Germany and the Allies killed some 20m people and redrew the map of Europe.

A major commemoration will take place in Verdun, north-east France, where French and German troops fought for eight months.

The battle was the war's longest, and Verdun has since become a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation.

Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, and the Duchess of Cornwall will be the guests of honour of French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the event.

Pacific century
Remembrance ceremonies have already been held in Australia, which lost 60,000 men in the conflict.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd used a speech at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra to issue a call for peace.

"We have all endured a most bloody century," he said.

"Let us resolve afresh at the dawn of this new century... that this might be a truly pacific peaceful century."

A lone bugler then played the Last Post, which is used to to commemorate the war dead in Commonwealth countries.

In the UK, three of the four surviving British World War I veterans - Henry Allingham, 112, Harry Patch, 110, and Bill Stone, 108 - will represent the RAF, Army and Royal Navy respectively during a ceremony at London's Cenotaph.

Mr Patch, Britain's oldest survivor of the trenches, will read an act of remembrance.

A two-minute silence will be observed from 1100 GMT, marking the exact time - at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month - when the Armistice Treaty came into effect to end the war.

World War I led to the creation of the Soviet Union and the destruction of the Ottoman Empire.


Useful reading:

(1) Echoes of conflict 90 years on (BBC)

(2) The last soldiers to die in WWI (BBC)

(3) Map of WWI battlegrounds (BBC)

(4) Audio slideshow: Scenes from the Great War's trenches (BBC)

Monks brawl at Jerusalem shrine

Monks brawl at Jerusalem shrine
Taken from BBC News, 09.11.08

Israeli police have had to restore order at one of Christianity's holiest sites after a mass brawl broke out between monks in Jerusalem's Old City.

Fighting erupted between Greek Orthodox and Armenian monks at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Christ's crucifixion.

Two monks from each side were detained as dozens of worshippers traded kicks and punches at the shrine, said police.

Trouble flared as Armenians prepared to mark the annual Feast of the Cross.

Tapestries toppled
Shocked pilgrims looked on as decorations and tapestries were toppled during Sunday's clash.

Dressed in the vestments of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian denominations, rival monks threw punches and anything they could lay their hands on.

The Greeks blamed the Armenians for not recognising their rights inside the holy site, while the Armenians said the Greeks had violated one of their traditional ceremonies.

An Armenian clergyman said the Greek clergy had tried to place one of their monks inside the Edicule, an ancient structure which is said to encase the tomb of Jesus.

"What is happening here is a violation of status quo. The Greeks have tried so many times to put their monk inside the tomb but they don't have the right to when the Armenians are celebrating the feast," he said.

The Armenians had been preparing to commemorate the 4th Century discovery of the cross believed to have been used to crucify Jesus.

A Greek clergyman said: "We protested peacefully, we stood here in the middle and we claimed that we shall not leave the procession finished unless they leave our guardian be inside. This didn't happen and in that moment the police interfered."

Six Christian sects share control of the ancient church and the BBC's Wyre Davies in Jerusalem says confrontations between them are not uncommon, but rarely descend into violence.

Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States of America!

Democratic Senator Barack Obama has been elected the first black president of the United States. The world is already a better place and Americans are loved all around the world once more!



"It's been a long time coming, but tonight... change has come to America," the president-elect told a jubilant crowd at a victory rally in Chicago. His rival John McCain accepted defeat, saying

"I deeply admire and commend" Mr Obama. He called on his supporters to lend the next president their goodwill.

World Reacts to Obama Win!

Israel Builds Museum on Muslim Graves

Taken from Islamonline, Thu. Oct. 30, 2008

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An Israeli court ruling allowing the construction of a Jewish museum over graves of some companions of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) in Al-Quds is sparking a controversy.

"Israeli is declaring a global war on Muslims and Arabs," Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, told a press conference on Thursday, October 30.

"A general of the [prophet's] Companions is buried in this cemetery."

Sheikh Salah noted that thousands of other Muslims have been buried in the cemetery, putting the number at 70,000 thousands until 1948.

Israel's High Court on Wednesday, October 29, rejected an appeal by two Muslim groups to halt the building of a Jewish museum on the site of a Muslim cemetery in central Al-Quds.

The court argued that the cemetery has been in public use since the municipality authorities put a parking lot over a small section of the graveyard in the 1960s.

It claimed that a proposal put forward by the museum planners to rebury the bones or cover the graves was "satisfactory" to resolve the issue.

The court said the construction of the museum, halted in 2006 after human remains were discovered during the digging, can resume immediately.

The Mufti of Al-Quds, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, said the verdict was a "grave decision which harms the Muslim holy sites."

He described the construction of the $250-million museum by a Los Angeles-based Jewish group as "act of aggression."

Help Plea

Sheikh Salah appealed to the Muslim world to intervene to halt the construction on the Muslim cemetery.

"We have sent messages to the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference to stop this crime."

The Muslim leader said the court verdict was part of the Israeli policies to judaize the holy city.
"But we will not give up our rights."

Israel captured Al-Quds in the 1967 war and later annexed the holy city, in a move not recognized by the international community.

The city is home to Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine and the first Qiblah [direction Muslims take during prayers].

Al-Quds is also home to some of the holiest Christian worship places, including the Jerusalem Church and the Greek Orthodox Church.

Archmandrite Atallah Hanna also criticized the Israeli court ruling.

"This is the true face of the occupation," he told the same press conference.

The Christian clergy reaffirmed the unity of Palestinian Muslims and Christians in the face of Israeli aggressions.

"We stand shoulder to shoulder in the same trench."

Israeli scam exposed

Hostage-taking in Caribbean result of illegal funds charged by Israeli employers

Taken from YNet news, Israel, 18.10.08
By Hanna Zohar

Three hundred Chinese workers decided to break the law and take the Israeli representatives of a construction company hostage until they get their money back. These workers paid a total of $4.5 million ($15,000 each) even before they started working – the money was divided among the various Chinese and Israeli intermediaries. We can assume that the construction company also got its share – as we know, there are no suckers around here.

The right to work is a basic universal right. Therefore, international conventions and laws in most countries forbid employers from demanding fees from employees in exchange for giving them work. Yet when it comes to those 300 Chinese workers, as well as the millions of workers who travel from eastern countries to the West, the conventions and laws do not offer much help.

It’s a fact. They pay thousands of dollars only because they hope for a high salary that will cover the debts they accumulated and enable them to save up some money and raise their standard of living upon their return to their homeland.

A Chinese construction worker employed by Israeli construction companies pays more than $20,000 even before coming here. Construction corporations are in fact manpower companies that got a license to bring laborers to Israel and arrange construction jobs for them. Before they were set up, in 2006, the workers paid sums ranging from $6,000 to $10,000.

By law, these corporations are not allowed to charge workers more than $1,000 for hiring them. The corporations pay the State tens of thousands of shekels for their license, and in addition are asked to provide significant financial guarantees in case the workers do not get paid. These high sums of money paid by the corporations have been passed on to the workers, which is why they need to pay much more today.

No such corporation has been sued to this day for charging illegal sums from workers. Moreover, no corporation was asked to pay the guarantees for worker salaries, even though hundreds of workers have complained that they have not been paid. What we have here is not only a case of the government turning a blind eye – knowingly and deliberately in my view – to the charging of illegal funds, but also criminal cooperation with the corporations in avoiding to use the guarantees to pay workers.

Israeli workers also charged illegally
In June 2007, a plan for bringing laborers from Thailand through a UN-affiliated group was supposed to get underway, with the purpose of preventing the high payments handed over by workers to intermediaries (Thai workers pay between $9,000 to $12,000.) The government decision to launch the plan was taken after a petition to the High Court of Justice filed by Attorney Yuval Livnat from the Kav LaOved (Workers’ Hotline) organization.

However, agricultural groups cried out, as many of them share in the illegal funds, and when the farmers’ lobby raises its voice, no convention or law can stand in its way. The government decision was frozen on the basis of various pretexts.

Meanwhile, Israeli workers are also being charged for the right to work, despite the universal ban. This is done in a hidden and sophisticated manner, under the auspices and with the cooperation of the Israeli government.

The 200 Chinese workers in the Caribbean exposed the ongoing scam of greedy companies and a corrupt government. Had it not been for the current financial crisis, the workers would reconcile themselves to the fees they have already paid and continue to work.

In Chinese, crisis also means opportunity. Perhaps this is our opportunity to understand something and change it.

Hanna Zohar directs the Kav LaOved (Workers’ Hotline) non-profit organization

Holy war strikes India

35 Christians killed and 50,000 forced from their homes by Hindu mobs enraged at Swami's murder

Taken from The Independent, UK
By Andrew Buncombe in Phulbani, Orissa, Thursday, 9 October 2008

As she recalled her awful story, Puspanjali Panda made no attempt to halt the tears flooding down her face.

Holding her daughter close, she told how a baying Hindu mob dragged her husband – a Christian pastor – from his bed, beat him to death with stones and iron rods and then threw him into a river. She found his corpse two days later, washed up on the bank. When she went to the police, they told her to go away.

Mrs Panda and thousands of others like her are victims of the worst communal violence between Hindus and Christians that India has seen for decades. For a country that boasts of its mutual religious tolerance, the long-simmering tension that has erupted in the Kandhamal district of the state of Orissa – a nun being raped, churches being burned, at least 35 people killed and thousands forced from their villages – is both a belated wake-up call and a mounting embarrassment. The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, called it a "national disgrace".

But for Mrs Panda, sheltering in a wretched relief camp in the state capital, Bhubaneswar, it is much worse than that. The 38-year-old said she had no idea what would now happen to her and her bewildered-looking child, Mona Lisa. "I do not want to go back. They have destroyed my home," she wailed.

The journey to the heart of the violence follows a bone-shaking road east from Bhubaneswar to the district capital, Phulbani. It was here in late August that thousands of Hindus armed with swords, sticks and primitive guns began taking matters into their own hands after the murder of an elderly religious leader, Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati.

The swami, a senior member of a right-wing Hindu organisation known as the Vishswa Hindu Parishad (VHP), had reportedly been working to prevent low-caste Hindus converting to Christianity. His followers claimed he had been murdered by local Christians, though police said there was no evidence of that. Either way, in the days that followed, groups of Hindus wrought a terrible revenge on Christian families whom they had lived alongside for decades. In addition to the deaths, 140 churches and prayer halls were attacked and up to 50,000 people forced to flee.

In instances the violence appears staggering in its cruelty. Rabindranath Pradhan, now a refugee, had to watch helplessly while a 300-strong mob doused his disabled brother with petrol and set him alight. "He was shouting 'Help me, Help me.' I could not help – there were so many of them," he said.

Local people are now forced to fly saffron-coloured flags outside their homes to identity themselves as Hindus and prevent attack. In the village of Pabinga a Catholic church lies in ruins, the cross pushed from the roof and the interior of the building badly damaged. Christian leaders say that families forced to flee have been told they can only return if they re-convert to Hinduism.

Raphael Cheenath, the Archbishop of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar, traced the violence to the anger of upper-caste Hindus at the number of Dalits or so-called untouchables converting to Christianity. Previously, he said, the lower castes had lived the lives of slaves and now – liberated and better-educated – they represented a challenge. "It incites the upper castes," he said.

While conversion has been an issue, the conflict here is more complex than a religious disagreement. Many activists believe the fight is an economic dispute between two of India's poorest groups, complicated by the issue of caste and ethnicity. For decades there has been conflict over land and resources between the two groups at the bottom of India's complex social system – the indigenous people of the region officially listed as scheduled tribes (ST) and non-indigenous poor known as scheduled castes (SC).

While the ST are Hindu, increasing numbers of SC have converted to Christianity to escape the misery of the caste system, for perceived economic benefit and because of the efforts of missionaries. Many politicians have accused right-wing Hindu groups of agitating tension for political reasons.

Somewhat surprisingly given the number of churches that have been destroyed, the ST of Kandhamal also say their conflict with the SC communities is not a religious dispute. They too say the battle is over land and resources.

Lambahdhar Kanhari, a tribal leader, says he has received death-threats from Christians. At his house near Phulbani a guard with a pump-action shotgun stands outside. Mr Kanhari did not deny that tribal people were responsible for the flurry of attacks but said that while the recent violence had been triggered by the killing of Swami Saraswati, its roots went back decades.

"These SC came from outside the area. They are criminal by nature. They have taken our land, our crops, everything," he said. "When the Swami was killed by the Christians some of his followers went after the killers and some of our people have been involved in the fighting."

The authorities say 11 relief camps have been set up to help more than 23,000 people. The Indian government has belatedly dispatched hundreds of police and paramilitaries to Kandhamal to calm the situation. In Phulbani, there is now a 6pm-8am curfew.

On a recent evening, the curfew had just been called as Asis Mishra was chaining shut the gate in front of his home. One of a tiny number of Christians in Phulbani still daring to live in their homes, Mr Mishra had good reason to take special safety precautions.

During the worst of the violence his family had fled their home and lived in a guesthouse, provided with food and money by Hindu families. Mr Mishra explained that he was not a recent convert, his family having been Christians for five generations. He said he hoped the fact he was well known within the community would protect him. He tapped on his chest and said: "We have been here a long time, but there is still some fear... It is always here."

Religious intolerance: The flashpoint state
* Orissa, on the Bay of Bengal, is India's ninth-largest state. It is less densely populated than its coastal neighbours but it is still home to 36 million people.
* Hindus make up 94 per cent of the population; 2 per cent are Christians. Tensions mounted in 1999, when an Australian missionary and his sons were burnt alive by a Hindu mob.
* The state has one-fifth of India's coal reserves and a third of its bauxite, but many people live in chronic poverty.